********Spin off blog from The General Election Blogs (part 2).********

Ok, who leaked the Labour Party Manifesto?

To top off a rather depressing day (10/05/17), ‘some W⚓ has leaked the Labour Party Manifesto!!!’ is now the kneejerk topic of the day- well the draft version, and it appears it was sent to two newspapers. The Mirror and the Telegraph seem to have been the recipients but the Guardian, Express, Independent and Daily Star have all made their feelings known on this event. This is the day before it was due to be finalised by Labour party officials and the day before the Conservatives said they were releasing theirs so hopefully not too much damage is done.

Each MSM outlet of course has their own slant on it, and it is being used to discredit as much as praise the party.

– “So here it is. [she says] Forty-five pages that reveal Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to transform the country if he can persuade enough voters that he is the man to be PM, and his vision is the best way forward.” Some others however, have treated her words with the same selective hearing as she has been doing to Corbyn and Labour:

Thing is, we hear over and again- and as I have said elsewhere in the blogs surveys have also been done to show- that a considerable majority of the British public think Corbyn’s policies are excellent – but don’t know they’re Labour policies because of MSM twisting. So the very sneering of the ‘right leaning’ outlets could cause more harm to the Conservative cause than the leak may have done to Labour. People™ defintiely know what Labour‘s policies are now!

Certainly Ian Lavery seems to think so. You may have seen him the other day on the Labour Party election launch. Asked about the leak at a Labour poster launch this morning (11/05/17), Lavery said (and here’s the VT) : “You’ve done him a real favour because what I’ve seen this morning is lots of people are terribly excited about what’s been leaked. We will look forward to this visionary manifesto. It’s absolutely fantastic – visionary policies for a new Britain for Labour.” He also notes that Corbyn is dealing with ‘internal matters’ today, which clearly meant the manifesto meeting (see below) that would not have been necessary had it not been leaked. Yes of course the MSM tried to spin it differently, constantly asking why Corbyn was not at the poster launch (and being snide about allotments) but all this has done is ensured that almost every outlet has covered A POSTER LAUNCH! A POSTER launch? REALLY? Like they would have done that ordinarily!

And by whom for that matter? The New Statesman have their own take on this, and have been unable to spin it beyond a small clique of peeved ‘Bl**rites at Southside OR an ally of Corbyn!

And The S*n say “Sources allege leader’s policy chief Andrew Fisher had draft document out in the open” and state there’ll now be a blame-game. They also quote PLP chairman John Cryer who apparently said the manifesto was “not good news”; (where did they get that from? Cryer has made no public announcement since the 2nd May) thought the Guardian sheds some light there- he meant the leak, not what was in the manifesto and was talking outside today’s (11/05/17) party meeting- and one anonymous shadow cabinet member who “distanced himself from the document”. And who might that be? Are the S*n alluding to this by Ben Bradshaw, when he said to the BBC: “Let’s get real, the Tories are 20 points ahead in the polls. It’s the Tory manifesto people need to be focused on.” (as reported in the HuffPost.) Ok, the first sentence could have been better worded- but the second sentence is totally correct. We have almost no clue what’s going to be in the Conservative one beyond a couple of May and Boris slips of the tongue.Nobody in the Labour party is against the manifesto, as can be seen from this official announcement that 100% of the Labour NEC, Unions, PLP AND Shadow Cabinet have voted for the manifesto in its final form to be published properly very soon. Yes, you know, that thing called democracy 😉 And going from the reader comments, half of them are not fooled by the S*n’s heady prose 😉

The Telegraph go a step further and insist that “Labour MPs last night turned their back on Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing manifesto and vowed to oust him after the election in an attempt to save their seats.” A totally and utterly desperate lie.

So right now…

But once the enquiry results are published, I will add it here.

By the look of the news and social media today (11/05/17) it has fallen to Andrew Gwynne, now one of Labour‘s Election Chiefs along with Ian Lavery, taking over from Jon Trickett, to spend his morning smoothing oils over whatever crack caused the leak. And the general consensus is that he’s done a great job of doing just that.

Ok, how about why they did it (whoever they are)?

To suggest a discontented staff member? Not many Labour MPs and staff will have had access to it.

To show Corbyn’s office is not ‘strong and stable’? 😉

To get non Labour voters kneejerking about it? Well, I have seen some of that. But if they don’t like fair wages, pensions, taxes and NI, rents, or housing; or proper funding for the NHS, social care, transport and education they weren’t going to vote Labour anyway.

To show disunity in the Party? Not one Labour MP has made any statement publicly that they don’t like what has been announced so far. (Doesn’t mean some of the MSM won’t try and imply it.)

To distract from the CPS announcement today on the irregular spending by the Conservativeslast General Election? It would make little sense for a Labour staff member to do this- are we supposed to believe they have a mole? And haven’t the Conservatives already done that with their fox hunting fiasco (see above) that from what I can see has even turned some Kippers against them?

The BBC are also getting some flak, not least John Humphreys, for this ridiculous non sequitur directed towards Gwynne earlier today on Radio 4: ”You want to renationalise the railways, yet your manifesto got leaked.” Suuuure John. Those two clauses are linked by nothing but hostility. Worried about the extra 2p tax on the bonus you’ll be getting from this blatant stitch up job are we? And Gwynne made a sterling response to Humphreys’ utter misunderstanding of what manifestos are supposed to be. Every manifesto I’ve ever read are at least 50 pages long! (Here’s Labour‘s from 2015- 86 pages long.) They are not, as Humphreys avers, meant to ‘brief’. Gwynne makes the very telling statement: “If we were sat here in 1945, you’d be telling Mr. Attlee the same…that his vision for Britain…the creation of the welfare state, the NHS.. education…” had no validity. Looks like Humphreys needs to get with the Kuenssberg programme and I never thought that would be a sentence I’d write in my lifetime!

And Gwynne’s ‘it’s not ideal’ response is a masterclass in showing the leak for what it rapidly appearing to be. Originally a little unfortunate but subsequently proving the adage ‘no publicity is bad publicity.’ 😉

Thus on the upside, not a single pre-announced policy was a lie or gimmick.

And it has got people™ talking, who normally would not see Labour in terms of policy, but rather in terms of how much they could foam™ about Corbyn.

Plus, if the draft remains true, further details to answer the constant MSM whine of ‘but how much will that all cost?’

The Mirror has summarised it here. And if you want the Telegraph’s view, here it is, along with the inevitable carp that Labour ‘are trying to take us back to the 70s’. Clearly their readers are horrified 😉 as it’s only managed to generate 6 comments (11/05/17) two of which say the policies are great.

No it isn’t trying to recapture the 1970s. (Clumsy allusion to how ‘powerful’ the unions were I guess. Well look at the state of the country now thanks to Thatcher paralysing them- zero hour contracts, lowest wages in Europe, employee rights like sick and holiday pay being ignored by many companies…)

Better than the 1870s of the Conservatives where the poor depend on alms and they have no secure jobs and no access to education or health care that is free at the point of use

If they have a job, they’ll be ‘boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs’ like May espoused on the One Show whilst wearing £225 diamante encrusted slip-ons.

Personally I’m going to wait till the actual manifesto is released and compare the two before I come to any conclusions, as well as keep an eye on the other manifestos to see if they ‘steal’ or counter any of the leaked draft. And note that Labour are holding an internal enquiry but not a ‘battle’ like the Guardian alleges. Inquiries are not battles: they are due process.

But it would seem that the MSM are running out of spin to turn this leak into the disaster it could have been. All they are doing instead is giving the Labour Party coverage their campaign simply was not getting till this week. There has been some ‘rallying’ *cough* by them today (11/05/17), deciding to switch to this little nugget instead, after not getting the outrage™ that they hoped the leak would cause:

Firstly, it’s not Corbyn’s car. Jeremy Corbyn does not own a car.Even the Telegraph had to admit that “it emerged the car belonged to Scotland Yard, which is facing an investigation”, while not saying that is usual procedure after any incident! And saying outright it happened because “Jeremy’s Corbyn’s convoy was desperate to avoid the cameras”. Nice. Well done for predicting the results of any inquiry minutes after it happened… and no, they weren’t. This is again usual police procedure to ensure that the occupants of such cars arrives at their destination safely. And it’s a good job you chose your words carefully, as even an implication that this was deliberate by the police or by Corbyn may lead to you being investigated too…

Sadly for Giles, it seems he ignored the warnings to get out of the way by another journalist just before the car went over his foot. On the VT here, somebody clearly says “Don’t get run over, mate”, just before the incident. So, there, kneejerking™ over.

And I wish Giles the speediest and most pain free of recoveries after being treated by the paramedics and nearby hospital, thanks to the NHS, the fact of the matter remains: “Never mind who leaked it, this Labour manifesto is a cornucopia of delights;” Polly Toynbee from the Guardian is forced to concede, after almost two years of attacks on Corbyn. She even debunks Humphrey’s sly allusion to the Labour Party’s 1893 manifesto on his radio show (see above), called thereafter by a gleeful MSM ‘the longest suicide note in history‘ after the ‘polls’ decided it was terrible.

Let’s have a look at some polls shall we?

When some come out for 8th-11th May I’ll add them here, but all pollsters are showing a climb in Labour‘s ratings even between the alleged ‘awful’ local election results (they weren’t) and the 8th May. If you ‘believe in’ such things 😉 The rise in the Labour share continues, as the New Statesman are quick to point out today (11/05/17)

There is this live one from Pollstation but it’s not closed yet. You have to log in to see it which isn’t my idea of an anonymous poll- then again you can’t answer Yougov polls unless you have an account either. And while they are cagey about who they are they appear to be new, small and independent.

Oh and the final nail in the coffin of the cry of “but Corbyn wants to leave us ‘defenceless'”, as I have been predicting and proving all month, (here, for starters) is this:

NATO Commitment to Defence Funding 2% of GDP

Like for Like renewal of Trident

The MSM are being very quiet about this aren’t they? As are super critical ‘Labour but not Corbyn’ supporters all over social media like JK Rowling and Tony Robinson. If they spoke up against him now, as self proclaimed Labour supporters, they’d also rightly be seen as a bit of a W⚓ …